Day 9 of the #200wad challenge.
Part 2 of a raw report card on my maker journey so far, in metrics. 2018 was a maker year for me. My very first year as an indie maker. In Feb, I made a commitment to launch a minimum viable product a month (#1mvp1month). See the list of products made in Part 1.
Metrics (since launch):
? Outsprint Store: 1.2k users, 2.7k pageviews, 4 card decks sold, ~US$270 earnings
? Public Design Vault: 6th (30 Mar) on Product Hunt (374 upvotes), 25.4k users, 92.8k pageviews, 460 email signups, US$35 pledges
? Public Design Forum+Chat: 8 upvotes on Product Hunt, 28 signups, 8.1k pageviews, $0 revenue. Public Design Chat (chat group on Telegram) has 52 members.
? Public Design Jobs: 32 upvotes on Product Hunt, 335 jobs posted, 3.2k users, 72 email signups, 8.7k pageviews, $0 revenue
? UX Storyboard: #1 Product Of The Day on Product Hunt (4 Aug 2018), 794 upvotes, 6.6k users, 11.6k pageviews, US$530 revenue
☕ Coffice City: #6 featured product of the day (3 Sep 2018), 319 upvotes, $0 revenue, unknown users/pageviews
? Space Nomads: 7 upvotes, 144 users, 295 pageviews, $0 revenue
? Grant Hunt: 10 upvotes, 120 users, 331 pageviews, $0 revenue, 38 chatbot queries
Cost$ vs Revenue$
I spent a total of ~US$700 so far on all my 8 MVPs, with managed hosting for Public Design Forum being the single biggest item ($200 upfront for a year). The rest had been small purchases – ~$60 per WordPress template, ~$20 per domain. It doesn’t include web hosting, which I already pay for anyway for my own blog (which is about $6/month for ALL my MVPs). That’s pretty lean as far as development of MVPs I feel!
Revenue so far is dismal, but at least I broke even on my costs. 3 sales on Outsprint Store about US$270. 7 coffees (US$5 each) pledged. 2 storyboarding gigs on UX Storyboard brought in US$530. That’s only a total revenue of around ~$830. So that’s about $100 profit… but I haven’t even paid myself yet! ?
Overall evaluation
Passed. Some products like Public Design Vault, UX Storyboard, Coffice City didn’t do too badly at launch, but the others tanked. Sustaining traction was harder. Broke even, mostly. My only reward? Sh*t loads of growth and learning.
Next: some thoughts on the good and the bad!